Learning Game: Reports from the Field

My greatest fear in this is that I’m putting in all this time and I’m just spinning my wheels. I hear horror stories of guys who do this for years and don’t get better and I would rather have a lobotomy than have that happen to me. It isn’t just me either. My main wingman, who is quite good at this, also worries about progress. It’s understandable. You give up sleep, hobbies, and your ego, it’s natural to hope for improvements. That being said, last night was arguably the best night I’ve ever had in my life. Not in terms of results, but in terms of how much I did, how many barriers I broke through, and how far I pushed myself. It started on the L train.

Walking along the subway platform I see a cute blonde girl standing by herself. I decide to open. From dozens of times of failing to open on the subway, I know that I have to immediately go in for else I’ll never do it. So I walk up and say:

“Looks like you’re going to Bushwick.”

She is, we talk a bit. Then my train comes and I leave her standing there. Already the night is starting off well. I get to Meatpacking, go to the bar where I’ve agreed to meet my wingman. One of them, I’m going out with two guys tonight. Inside it’s “Deader than a virgin’s dreams of getting a bj” as I text my buddy. He shows up a few minutes later and we immediately bounce to another bar. Inside I see my other wingman and he barely has time to say hi before I grab him and pull him into a set. They can’t handle our antics and leave. I immediately go open a girl who is standing with five of her friends around. I don’t even consider the social pressure here. My brain is working like this “She’s a girl, open” not “Omg there’s six of them, they’ll all stare, there’s no way this will work”. My girl ended up being on the brink of marriage which was annoying, but it was still fun. The leader of the this female group congratulated me.

Her: “That was very bold of you, very cool.”

Me: “Thanks. I just figure you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, you can’t care what other people think.”

Haha that, and approach like 2,000 sets in 11 months and it’s easy! Leave that group, keep approaching. After thirty minutes we’ve easily opened a dozen sets, just about everything in the entire bar. Keeping in mind that my #1 goal is to lead, I was able to lead a set or two, that was good. But also my main wingman kept poking my girls in the belly and freaking them out! He would do that then they would run away. It was 90% funny and 10% annoying. My other wingman says with some regret:

“Damn dude, we’ve burned this place to the ground”

I reply: “It doesn’t fucking matter man! This is Friday, we have unlimited options!”

We bounce to my favorite club in New York. Inside I open within five seconds. It was a really, really good open. I walked up to the girl, introduced myself and without skipping a beat put my arm around her and started walking. She followed, I loved it! Leading off the open, that’s the epitome of success in my mind. Fast forward to six or eight sets later. Three girls standing in a circle. I reach my hand out and hold it in front of one of the girls for her to take. I’ve been doing this all night with great success. She takes it and I pull her in towards me. We start talking, I’m getting closer and closer for the makeout. Then my perverted fucking wingman pokes her in the back! That manwhore. But this time it works out better and she immediately starts making out with me. I tell him this later and he gets a kick out of it.

This set was interesting though. We were making out, she was into me, I start to lead. And then almost immediately I start to go for the pull. I mean we’ve been talking like 6 minutes and I’m trying to pull her. She doesn’t take this well. I push for it one more time and she leaves me in disgust. So what’s the lesson? First off, I’m happy with what I did. I’d much rather push too hard and fuck it up then be a wimp and let it fade and die. But I think that by pushing so hard, so fast it was needy and just showed me to a be a guy who only cares about sex. We had hardly started talking and now I’m pushing for sex already, that’s not a recipe for success (in general). So if I could redo this I would talk more, hang out more, get to know her friends a bit. Then, instead of immediately going for the pull to her apartment, I would say that we should go outside and get some fresh air. Then taxi to her place, I’ll just walk you there. Then I get there, let me just use the bathroom. I think that would have been much better than pushing so hard for the pull so fast.

Flash forward to a little while later. I open two girls and I start to lead them to a new area of the club. Only I’m walking ahead of them and it’s kind of weird. I do this often. Sometimes a girl isn’t down for me to hold her hand and lead so I just end up walking in front. Better would be to hold out my arm and to lead arm and arm. This would be the pro way to handle this situation.

Flash forward and I see one of my favorite pickup role models. He’s a fucking gangster and a half, incredible dude. Running a bootcamp so I don’t want to disturb him too much but I’m definitely going to introduce myself. I’m with two girls at the moment and he’s standing talking to a few people. I’m waiting till he finishes talking so that I can say hi, but I’m also talking to these two girls. This creates an interesting situation because I’m talking to the girls but I’m putting a greater effort into watching this guy to see when he leaves the group so I can say hi. The reaction from the girls is telling. They can tell they don’t have my attention and they start flirting way, way more and touching me. It’s nuts. I’m making them chase me and I’m doing it 100% by accident. All I can think is “how the fuck can I do this without having to be looking at some guy I want to talk to?” No easy answer. It’s one of those things you can’t fake. I think all I can do is keep it in mind, keep moving towards the point where girls chase me.

Good news is that I do eventually get to say hi to this guy. What a pimp, I’d love to learn from him one day.

Flash forward, it’s 2:30am. I’ve been out for three and a half hours. Both my wingman are gone. One probably pulled, the other left. I’ve easily opened twenty-five girls by now, maybe even thirty. I’m tired, my brain hurts, I’m ready to go home. I’m ten feet from the exit of the club when I think, “Fuck this. I can do more” and this striking quote goes through my brain, I wish I knew it exactly but it’s something like this: “To become something that you’re not, you have to do things that you’ve never done.” So here we are. This is the exact moment when I always, always leave the club. And on the rare times I do stay, I never open again. Fuck that. I’m going to stay and I won’t let myself leave until I open another 5 sets.

I don’t open 5 sets though.. I open 8. I stay for another half an hour and have a glorious time. Fucking awesome. I started the night by opening a girl on the subway platform and ended it by staying out longer and doing more. I’ve now set that precedent for the next level.

Notes

*It’s taking me quite a while to learn how to balance that fine line between letting a set fade into nothing vs. being aggressive to the point that I blow it out. That being said, I learn 1,000% more from the times that I push too hard and do too much, vs. when I just let shit die into nothing. I’ll continue to calibrate while also keeping in mind that going for the pull after 8 minutes is probably, in general, not the best move.

*I see this journey as the purification of the soul (that sounds a little like something Hitler would say, but stay with me). I believe that there’s a massive diamond somewhere inside me but it’s covered with thousands of layers of shitty beliefs, half-truths and fear. By going out and throwing myself into insane situations on a daily basis I’m stripping away the bullshit and getting a little bit closer to the diamond on the inside. The closer I get, the more it shines through. A quote that I like, “You don’t attract what you want, you attract what you are”

*I opened close to 40 sets last night. I know that this is not ideal. The ideal is opening one set and pulling (like we did on this beautiful night in Berlin, or like I did a few months ago in Williamsburg). But I’ve been told over and over that the only way to become awesome at this is to take massive action and trust in the process. So I keep doing this, keep working on sticking points, and pray to god that I’m not just grinding my wheels.

*I told a girl about how I was going to put babies in her stomach last night. She laughed so hard. Despite my polarizing attitude I rarely talk sexual like this. It would probably be a good move though, to start talking more sexually. I don’t do it because I’ve never ever “naturally” done it in my life haha, but if it brings results I’m down to explore it more. Besides, I’ve never “naturally” approached 40 girls in one night, so I’m just living a life where I do things that I’ve never done before.

*I don’t think I’ve fully understood how important leading is, it’s everything. That’s why I’m thinking this: instead of worrying about how soon I can go for the makeout, it would actually be better to think about how soon I can lead. If I can do it off the open, great. If I takes a few minutes, ok. If I have to try three times before I get it, fine. I’m willing to try everything. In the last week I’ve gone for dominant leads, I’ve gone for subtle ones, I’ve just asked girls nicely to walk with me and I’ve asked them not nicely. I’m trying everything that I can conceivably think of to get girls to follow me. The more I get success with it the more confidence I’ll have the more likely it will be to happen.

About Me

I’m 25 and going out quite a bit. When I started I was scared to approach, but things are better now. I’ve had sex in bathrooms, had girls tell me to kill myself, and everything in between. Find out more here.